X-Girls; An Exercise in Technology

There are many photographers who think Photoshop is evil. Some purists still insist on shooting film, even though it costs them a lot of money. But for so many working photographers, whether it’s a simple RAW conversion or hours of photoshop work and dozens of correction layers, no one sees our images right out of the camera. I recently had a project that left no options but several hours of photoshop work to achieve what I had hoped to do in camera.

I have long admired the edgy, rim-lighted sports portraits that fill the pages of leading sports magazines like ESPN and television ads. I have created a few of those myself. It was this type of shot I had in mind when asked to shoot the softball team of a friend’s daughter. But instead of being able to shoot this how and where I wanted, where I could control the light, I was forced to take this photo at 2:00 PM in full sunlight at a ball field with zero shade, nothing of great interest for a setting, and no electric power for plugging in powered strobes. So I had to try and wrestle back control of the light from the sun with speedlights. And that’s exactly what I did.

As best I could tell from the LCD, albeit in full sunlight, I composed a nice “tough girl” portrait of nine softball players. Using the eyeblack I had requested along with the bats, gloves, and balls used for props, no one looked terribly out of place. I had just about finished packing up my gear when the head coach said, “I hear you’re pretty good with Photoshop. We actually have one more player who didn’t show up.” Great. Nice to find out after the fact.

After a “makeup” shoot at a similar time and similar lighting conditions with the “missing” player and more hours of Photoshop work than I will divulge, I’m pretty pleased with the final product. It’s definitely a portfolio builder and a look that I will continue to use with future shots. And if you think you know, please drop me a line with a guess as to which player I composited in.

March Madness

Could there possibly be a better sporting event than March Madness? I know it’s a stretch to think of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship as one event when there are actually 68 teams in the field and somewhere around 862 games played. But for three weeks, a big chunk of the world’s male population forgets that they really don’t care that much about basketball and glues themselves to the television to see if Butler, Gonzaga, or some other underdog will emerge as this year’s Cinderella in sneakers, dashing their bracket and bragging rights to smithereens.

I was recently asked by a friend to take some photos of a local basketball league for his church’s website. Not exactly the big dance, but an opportunity to learn, nonetheless. The only problem—his church’s gym is lighted with a minimal number of fluorescent fixtures. No high-bay metal halides. No downlights from the overhead scoreboard. From a photography standpoint, it might as well be lighted by a couple of lilac bath candles and a kid with a green glowstick. I’m talking dark.

Not to be deterred, I schemed up an idea based on my travels to college arenas, where real sports photogs use the built in light system. So with two 340 watt/second Alien Bee moonlights on lightstands bouncing off of the white ceiling and fired wirelessly with a radio trigger, I was able to get f2-1/50 ambient light to look something like f8-1/250. Just what I needed to stop some action. They aren’t great compositions or works of art. No matter how much I encouraged them, the players ran around wherever they wanted to go, oblivious to the rule of thirds or my needs. But I learned a new technique that worked very well, and hopefully populated a Baptist website with the best darn recreation league basketball photos ever taken in a middle-Georgia church gym in March. Now that’s madness.

Hot Shots

Just two weeks ago, I was shooting in the area around Duluth, Minnesota. And it was cold. Forty-five degrees. For a high. In June. Today, I shot a Little League All-Star baseball game and girl’s softball game in Warner Robins, Georgia. And it was hot. Very hot. My car said it was 102 when I pulled out of the parking lot.

I must admit, I had never shot much sports action before—kayaking, soccer, and some church league softball. So when a friend asked me to shoot their all-star softball team, I made time. Even better, the umpires at both games said, “do what you want, just don’t get on the playing field during the game.”

This was also my first chance to try out my 70-200mm f2.8 in action shots. At f2.8, I was able to really isolate the players against the background. This lens just has incredible bokeh, and in full sunlight—it’s not like they let me pick the game times to accommodate lighting—I was shooting at 1/1000 to 1/2000 most of the day. It’s not great for saturation, but it does an amazing job of freezing a bat and pitched ball in mid-swing.

Chances are, Sports Illustrated will not be calling any time soon. But I had a good time, learned a few things, and with any luck, I might actually sell a print or two. You can check out a few of the images here. I'll upload more as I get them processed.